The manned suborbital spacecraft Unity made another successful test flight, reaching an altitude of more than 52 km in the mesosphere above the Earth’s surface, reported Virgin Galactic.
“After the successful separation from the carrier Eve at an altitude of 14,000 meters, the pilots Dave Mackay and Mike Masucci launched the rocket engine of the spacecraft, sending it almost at a vertical angle to the sky at a speed of 2.47 times the speed of sound”, says the message of Virgin Galactic.
After the planned 42 seconds of the rocket engine, the spaceplane, having passed the stratosphere, entered the mesosphere, reaching a height of 52,059 meters.
The mesosphere is a kind of “dead zone” for flights, as the air is too thin to support airplanes or balloons (at an altitude of 50 km, the air density is 1000 times less than at sea level), and at the same time too dense for flights artificial satellites in such a low orbit.
After completing a short-term flight in the mesosphere, the spacecraft landed at the airfield in the Mojave Desert in California.
This is the fourth test flight of Virgin Galactic’s suborbital Unity spacecraft.
However, earlier the company reported that on Thursday it is going to bring Unity to the upper layer of the mesosphere – above 80 km. As part of the past test flight, the spacecraft already reached an altitude of over 52 km and a speed of 2.47 Mach.
The reusable Unity spaceplane, designed by Virgin Galactic, is intended for commercial space excursions. The ticket price will be 250,000 USD.
How many more tests are scheduled and when the first passenger flights will take place, Virgin Galactic has not yet reported. The company hopes to bring the Unity spacecraft to a height of 80.5 km and even greater speed so that passengers can experience a state of weightlessness for a few minutes.
The developers of the spacecraft previously also argued that the maximum altitude of its flight can reach 140-320 km.
In addition to the crew, there was a mannequin on board the spacecraft as a “passenger”, as well as NASA equipment for conducting a series of experiments.
